Dr Karl P.N. Shuker BSc PhD FRES FZS is a zoologist who is internationally recognized as a world expert in cryptozoology (the scientific investigation of mystery animals whose existence or identity has yet to be formally ascertained), as well as in animal mythology and allied subjects relating to wildlife anomalies and inexplicabilia. He obtained a BSc (Honours) degree in pure zoology at the University of Leeds (U.K.), and a PhD in zoology and comparative physiology at the University of Birmingham (U.K.). He is now a freelance zoological consultant and writer, living in the West Midlands, England.
Dr Shuker appears regularly on television and radio, has acted as a consultant for the Discovery TV series Into the Unknown, as a question setter for the BBC's cerebral quiz show Mastermind, and has traveled throughout the world during the course of his researches. In 2005, Dr Shuker was honoured by the naming of a new species of loriciferan invertebrate after him - Pliciloricus shukeri - by its discoverer, Danish zoologist Prof. Reinhardt Kristensen.